Guides
Growing guides
Species-specific, practical guidance. We start with the plants that cause the most trouble, because that is where a guide is actually worth reading.
Overview
10 medicinal herbs to grow at home, ranked by difficulty
The honest ranking — which are foolproof, which have one specific catch, and which three need a month in the refrigerator before they will cooperate.
Technique
Cold stratification: the four-week step that fixes stubborn seed
The refrigerator method step by step, which species actually need it, how long each one takes, and what to do when mould appears.
Reference
Which seeds need cold stratification, species by species
Yes, optional or no for 78 garden plants — with the rows that disagree with the usual lists citing the germination trial they come from, because several of them do.
Reference
Which seeds need light to germinate, and which need darkness
Yarrow must sit on the surface, calendula must be covered, and sowing them the same way loses one of them. Depth for 78 plants, and how to stop surface-sown seed drying out.
Technique
What to winter sow, and what is just a wasted jug
Winter sowing is cold stratification done outdoors, which tells you exactly which seeds are worth it. The milk jug method, and the 13 frost-tender seeds every list includes that will die out there.
Free tool
When to plant each of the 10 medicinal herbs
Put in your last frost date and get the week to stratify, sow and transplant every species — including the three that need a month in the refrigerator before the sowing clock even starts.
Technique
How to harvest coneflower seeds (echinacea)
When the cone is ready, how to get the seed out without shredding your hands, how to tell seed from chaff, and what viable echinacea seed actually looks like.
Guides by species
One guide for each of the ten plants, leading with the specific thing that makes people fail with that plant.
Easy · Annual
How to Grow Calendula From Seed (The Easiest Plant in the Kit)
If you have never grown anything from seed before, start here. Calendula is quick, forgiving, and the one plant in this collection that is genuinely difficult to fail with.
Easy · Perennial
How to Grow Chicory From Seed (Check Your Region First)
Chicory germinates in a week, tolerates drought, and comes back for years. Those same qualities are why it has naturalised across much of North America, so the first step here is not sowing.
Easy · Annual
How to Grow German Chamomile From Seed (Do Not Bury It)
Chamomile is one of the fastest and most generous plants in this collection, and there is exactly one way to get it wrong: covering the seed.
Easy · Short-lived perennial
How to Grow Feverfew From Seed (And How to Stop It Taking Over)
Feverfew is easy to grow and easy to end up with far too much of. The skill with this plant is not germination — it is containment.
Easy · Perennial
How to Grow Yarrow From Seed (And Why Year One Looks Like Failure)
Yarrow is genuinely easy to grow and genuinely frustrating to grow from seed, because everything it does in the first year looks like nothing happening.
Moderate · Annual or short-lived perennial
How to Grow California Poppy From Seed (Direct Sow or Do Not Bother)
This is the one plant in the kit where the usual advice — start it indoors, transplant it out — is actively wrong. Get that single decision right and the rest is easy.
Moderate · Biennial
How to Grow Evening Primrose From Seed (Year One Is Leaves Only)
This is the most commonly misdiagnosed failure in the whole kit. Evening primrose does exactly what it is supposed to do in year one, and what it is supposed to do looks like nothing.
Hard · Perennial
How to Grow Marshmallow Root From Seed (Stratify It, and Keep It Wet)
Marshmallow is one of the three genuinely difficult species in this kit, and it fails in two predictable ways: sown without cold treatment, and planted somewhere too dry.
Hard · Perennial
How to Grow Echinacea From Seed (Without the Patchy Germination)
Purple coneflower is a genuinely rewarding perennial that most people get wrong at the very first step. The fix costs nothing and takes four weeks of doing nothing.
Hard · Perennial
How to Grow and Germinate Lavender From Seed (And Why Professionals Usually Do Not)
If one packet in a herb kit disappoints you, it will probably be the lavender. That is the species behaving normally, and it is worth understanding why before you blame yourself.
All ten species above have a guide. Each one leads with the specific thing that makes people fail with that plant, because that is the part the seed packet leaves out.